Haha, get 'im, Moe.

I'm so depressed.

And who, Mr. AD AGE CRITIC-which means you look at ADS all day long-who do you think is sapping our "stength of character"? People like you and your ilk, that's who. Now shove off and get my stretch-marky ass a martini. Aging honestly and gracefully is done best with top-shelf gin.

oh, shit. it's "strength of character" that ages people gracefully?

i always thought it was good nutrition, a balanced diet, a regular exercise regime, refusal to wear Mom Jeans, etc.

but now that i know i just have to act like a saint, i'm headed to taco bell and the tanning salon.

Isn't the point that Faith Hill could have been photographed in situ in a flattering way? The stylist could've found an outfit that didn't accentuate the back fat. Freckles could have been covered in make-up. Toss a cheesecloth over the lens to soften the wrinkles. Have her pose in a way that does not resemble a voracious baboon. Whatever.

It's not that it's wrong to put a flattering "image" on the cover. It's that the retouching and airbrushing create a complete fucking fantasy - impossibly thin and positioned arms, hair that's not there. Even if Faith Hill were the 20 years younger or so the airbrushing made her out to be, she still wouldn't look like that.

"Toying with one's own haircolor", Simon, is not tantamount to airbrushing away absolutely every sign of the normal mom/woman "schtick" that Faith Hill likes to play up in interviews. You, apparently, can't get beyond her "raccoon-eyed look" to note the down-homey "real" part of her image.

While I'll agree that Faith & Co. were most-likely brutally marking up the test shots w/ a red Sharpie, I can't imagine that even they would've been so bold as to remove ALL of her crow's feet and hard-earned smile lines. I mean, even they realize that the woman is embarking on middle-age.

new shirt:

I <3 MY CELLULITE

Speaking as someone who posesses cellulite, I do sometimes ask myself if I could afford endermologie, would I get it done?
The answer is probably yes.
My "strength of character" comes from being deeply flawed and not the slightest bit scared to admit it.
So put that in your pipe and smoke it, Dumenco.

@Everybody Likes Pandas: Don't take this the wrong way, but the way you used "in situ" was incredibly sexy.

The best part of the article is about having to airbrush out the Reverend Howard Finster's enormous wood from photos.

And yet again I am reminded of why I prefer to read Jezebel rather than AdAge!!!

@MsStressa:
I know, that made me feel weird inside my stomach. And then I remembered that in the last century, a hippie magazine I worked for ran a cover photo of Pete Seeger with a big trouser snake propping up his banjo. Photoshop hadn't been invented and by the time we noticed the beast, we couldn't afford to crop.

Old guy wood!

"over-the-top raccoon-eyed look"
"crinkly, baggy, 39-year-old eyes"
"probably not only caused her dress to bunch up in such a way as to squish up her (surely minimal) back fat"

Hate ladies much, Simon?

Simon does hate women as much as (like all ad folks)mortally fear that women might start to ever-so-slightly not despise themselves.

Am I the only one who thought Faith Hill looked better in the unretouched picture?

That's what they're afraid of.

@MsStressa: Seriously. What an awesome boner crime, Batman.

I meant not: "Simon does not hate women so much as . . . .

Does Simon Dumenco live in New York? If so, has he ever seen the massive American Apparel billboard on Houston and Allen featuring a model with approx 15 ft. stretch marks? Or how about the ads with the model who has a massive Frida-style unibrow?

Call the ads creepy, pervy, whatever, but airbrushed and cellulite-free they are most certainly not.

@Hamburgerhotdog: Zing!

Simon, honey, there's cellulite in the Ice Capades locker room, too. Just ask Perez.

Faith Hill is a gorgeous woman, no matter what.

@hamburgerhotdog: I love your name. But don't mind me, see, that's just my cellulite talking.

How fortunate for Simon that his boyfriend has the "strength of character" to still look like he's 20 years old (he'll be 30 this year), and about 2% body fat.

i accept that i am deeply flawed as a person. i embrace and love that about myself... but as others have posted if there was a magic cellulite pill i would take it. i would stil lbe flawed but my ass would look smoother :P

@BiscuitDoughJones:
the upper roll of my back fat says hi right back atcha ;)

The advertising and fashion industries both seem to hate the way women look naturally -- why is that?

@pink_orchid: Exactly!

Phrygian: because you don't have to buy it.

I find it intensely amusing that it could be pervy to enjoy looking at unretouched photos of women.

That article was bullshit. Typical coming from a dude for whom wrinkles and grey hairs look sexy, not man-matronly.

Go ahead and call me insecure, but it actually makes me feel better about myself to know that others (especially celebrities) have cellulite problems!!! I'm in my 20s, a size 4 and an athlete and STILL have it -- it kills me to see girls in magazines, on TV, even athletes, with baby smooth butts and thighs! Glad to know others have the same problems!!

Ok, that was all the sensitivity I can stand. Back to sarcasm and snarkiness ASAP!

I agree with the above "in situ" comments. The truth is that any photographer worth his/her salt should be able to shoot a great photograph. But that actually takes time and skill. You have to have an excellent sense of lighting, and framing. And you often have to shoot a lot to get that one great shot. Now thanks to laziness and photoshop its easy to make up for a crappy pose, bad lighting, bad styling etc.

I hate AdAge. I wrote a nasty complaint to them a while back because of an article written where the writer basically said that women buy Dove shampoo because they are shallow. I left my home phone number, cell number, email and home address and the guy still never got back to me to explain how that idea of his makes sense.

"Fewer and fewer Americans [...] have the strength of character to age gracefully."

The point being that the magazine industry should help along this dearth of national character by giving ordinary people unrealistic expectations about what ageing even means?

Run-on sentence. You get my drift.

There is a sizable difference between photoshopping out boners and skid marks and photoshopping out any sign that Faith Hill is a normal, gorgeous woman.

Although they haven't directly said this its fairly obvious that way more guys I know jerk off to american apparel ads than victoria secret or any other uber-modelish airbrushed ad. Its similar to the way they like how their girlfriends look when they just woke up in the morning or when they've gained a little weight. Humans like humans not plastic or the wand tool on photoshop.
We girls might envy Faith's lack of backfat. But any guy I know would freak over the pre-photoshop Faith.

wow. i think i missed the point of the post. i was too enthralled by that gorgeous be-thonged ass. beautiful. i could easily go to sleep and wake up next to that.

if that really is the bottom of moe, i would love to meet you. yummy!

this is creepy-internet-stalker...out!

Would it be completely inappropriate for me to say that I don't really have cellulite? Unnecessary? Irritating? Ok.

@blueberrypancake:

(a) I totally agree -- it makes me feel much better to know that cellulite is, as far as I can tell, part of being female and (b) as to baby-smooth skin, babies TOTALLY have cellulite. Even my bean-pole preschooler has what I guess would be called cellulite. I'm starting to think "cellulite" may be a synonym for "life-enabling fat".

@chesty buttons: thank you for that significant distinction. As for the ad industry, where boners and skidmarks are pretty par for the course... I'm not surprised the author's understanding of the issue failed to get beyond that point.

Lead me to the promised land. Lead me to pics of Pauly Shore's weasely skid marked ass!

The point is: more and more people is feeling horrible about their look. More and more people is developing eating disorders.
If you hairbrush an almost forty years old to look like a creepy 14, you're really helping the cause of 0 selfesteem by 2012, helping some real 14 years old to get into anorexia.
If you cancel skid marks, well you are actually helping NOT developing eating disorders.

and i love that butt.

I know this isn't the crux of your post, but it is TRUE that everyone has cellulite. I am very tiny (5'1 and 100lbs) and I have it. I think cellulite has been blown out of proportion, like everything else normal and natural about the human body so companies can instill anxiety in women and then collect the profit. Fact of the matter is, it's not even a sign of being fat, or overweight, it's just what skin does. Kind of like these products that try to eliminate the appearance of "pores." That shit is just there to let your skin breathe! Kudos for calling out Reg-book.